DETROIT — COVID-19 transmission is at the highest risk level designated by the federal government in every county in Michigan with the addition of Sanilac County in data released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday.
Sanilac County, which previously had a "substantial" risk of virus transmission, became the last of Michigan's 83 counties on Monday to reach a "high" level of transmission — the maximum risk level defined by the CDC.
The CDC recommends anyone living in a community with "substantial" or "high" transmission wear a mask indoors as well as outdoors if social distancing isn't possible, regardless of vaccination status.
"There’s more transmission going on, and some of it is related to the fact that schools are back in sessions and a lot of school districts are not mandating masks," said Dr. Matthew Sims, director of Infectious Disease Research for Beaumont Health. "The largest rising group of positive people are children right now.
"Children below the age of 12 can't get vaccinated at all, and from 12 to 16 or so started (vaccinations) later than everybody else, so it's a vulnerable population."
Michigan health officials reported 106 new COVID-19 outbreaks at K-12 schools across the state Monday, with the majority of new cases at elementary and high schools. Outbreaks have grown each week for four straight weeks since classes resumed.
Michigan's COVID-19 infection numbers have been trending upward for 12 weeks amid concerns over the highly contagious delta variant. Only six Michigan counties were listed with "high" COVID-19 transmission on Aug. 1.
Some counties momentarily dropped into "moderate" transmission for a single day around the Labor Day holiday. In places with "low" or "moderate" transmission, mask-wearing is not considered as critical.
Some counties change in ranking depending on reporting of cases or available testing, but most counties in Michigan have had at least substantial or high transmission of the virus for more than a month.
The CDC calculates transmission risk based on both the number of new cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days (between 50 and 99.99 people per 100,000 is considered substantial, while 100 or more people per 100,000 is considered high) and on the percentage of positive NAATs test. A NAATs test, short for nucleic acid amplification test, includes most types of COVID-19 tests people are familiar with, such as the PCR test. Communities with a 10% or higher positivity rate would be ranked as having a high transmission risk.
Michigan added 7,733 cases and 35 deaths from COVID-19 on Monday, including cases from Saturday and Sunday.
The latest tallies from the state Department of Health and Human Services push the overall totals to 1,015,802 cases and 20,898 deaths since the virus was first detected in the state in March 2020.
Sims said that vaccination, as well as masking, are the only ways to bring the number of infections down.
"They (kids) might not get that sick," said Sims, noting that some children do become severely ill, including those who come down with multi-system inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C. "But the truth is, they bring it home to their parents, and to their grandparents, and friends and family that may be getting together without masks.
"If we want to get ahead of this, if we want to bring the numbers down and keep this under control, we need everybody to get vaccinated, we need people wearing masks when they're indoors or when they're in crowds — these are the things that are going to help prevent it."
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